Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

The Archive of Unnamed Workers attempts to negotiate the absences in archaeology-related photographic archives by creating numerous, fictional, portraits of Cypriot workers using Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) machine learning technology. Photographic archives by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, John Linton Myres, and Luigi Palma di Cesnola, became the source material for these new, machine-made, portraits of Cypriot workers at archaeological sites. The final images are completely artificially created, and do not resemble any real workers. Instead, they pay tribute to the countless and unphotographed workers who contributed to Cypriot archaeology but who remain unnamed and unacknowledged. The artificial intelligence-generated portraits were subsequently transferred to 35mm glass photographic slides (reversal film), a technology widely used in the mid-20th century, which is almost obsolete today.

During colonial times, workers at archaeological excavations were usually unnamed and unacknowledged even though they have contributed significantly to Cypriot archaeology, not only with their hard manual work, but also with their intimate knowledge of the landscape and valuable insights about possible excavation sides. “Shadow 1” and “Shadow 2” are oil portraits of unknown Cypriot workers who worked at the excavations of Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904), a notorious excavator who arrived in Cyprus in 1865 as a United States consul. The reference of this painting comes from a 19th century photograph Cesnola took of a group of eight workers titled “Some of my Turkish Diggers at Cyprus”. Two of the workers were isolated, blown up, and portrayed in oil painting – a medium that at the time was reserved for the upper social classes. Thus, these paintings are an act of acknowledging and paying tribute to the countless, unknown workers at archaeological sites.

Note: the framing and size of the paintings were inspired by Gerhard Richter’s “48 portraits”, 1972. The 48 portraits were based on photographic portraits found in encyclopedias of important people.

Exhibition Views: State Gallery of Contemporary Art - SPEL, Nicosia, Cyprus. Exhibition: “In the Sea of the Setting Sun”, Curated by Elena Stylianou, Nov. 2022 - Feb 2023.